


Familiar Taste of Poison

by LaurytheLatrator



Series: Sapphic Jisbon AU [3]
Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-lesbian!Lisbon, Always-a-woman!Jane, Dubious Consent, Episode: s04e24 The Crimson Hat, F/F, Heavy Angst, Ladies in love, POV Bisexual Character, POV Lesbian Character, Patrick Jane is technically Patricia Jane, wlw!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 12:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9896207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurytheLatrator/pseuds/LaurytheLatrator
Summary: Jane may care, Lisbon doesn’t doubt that, not even after six months apart. And yet, she stays away.An installment of my wlw!AU, and a coda to The Crimson Hat.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Halestorm song (very appropriate for Jane/Lisbon/Lorelei)
> 
> I really do like writing for this AU. I had the idea a while ago, but real life kept interfering. I had the inspiration today and just banged this out. Maybe I'll hate it later, or maybe I'll write a happier second chapter. Not sure yet.

 

_ Do you give up yet? _

Not a chance.

That Red John would even pose the question means Jane’s getting close. Whether it was Timothy Carter, or Rosalin, or any of the strides she’d made this year, Jane knew cornered animal when she saw it.

Therefore his game was crucial to play. It was showing his hand to dare her to drop out. No matter his reason, and she would discover it, no matter what the cost.

So. What would she do if she  _ had _ given up?

Leave the CBI. Check.

Cut herself off from the people who care, from Lisbon. Check.

Return to the only other life she’d known. Check.

Which is how Patricia Jane winds up in Las Vegas, counting cards, offering palm readings, becoming a barfly. She drinks too much and flirts back before they see her ring. She gets into heated arguments with marks after deliberately botching some reads. It’s the perfect picture of a breakdown.

She notices the cocktail waitress after two months. It takes six months to get a bite.

The latina brunette is gorgeous, and precisely Jane’s type, and it’s disturbing that he knows. She finally leans against the bar beside her and moans about her job. She’s meant to be complaining about being squeezed into a tiny dress and high heels, but Jane wonders if she’s as reluctant about her primary purpose here. There’re some probing questions, some flirting, and Jane suddenly has to beat a hasty retreat; a mark has chosen to call security on her.

It’s nothing once she’s out on the street to play ‘drunk and disorderly’ and she gets carted off to a drunk tank for the night. Patricia lies in wait for the animal to come to her.

 

* * *

 

Her thumb hovers over the green button.

Jane doesn’t like being photographed. The icon in her phone has her official CBI ID picture. It captures the sheen of her hair, the slant of her eyes, the slope of her nose, but it lacks her cunning, her wit, her playful spark.

Jane took it all with her when she left.

_ Her entreaty, her constant refrain, “Let me help you.” _

Fuck you, Jane. Drunk in Public in Las Vegas. Is that how the grand story of Patricia Jane would end? Passed out in the street, or in a ditch, getting into scuffles and landing in jail? She’d lived through enough breakdowns, tried to keep too many people from hitting rock bottom, her shoulders were sore from the weight of the world. She tried  _ everything _ to keep Jane afloat, and now...

_ “You’re sweet,” she’d said, voice lilting gently and beautifully and piercing Lisbon’s heart. _

Her anger downshifted as it always did to melancholy.

Lisbon would’ve done anything, given anything, if Jane would only accept it. But too many calls had gone unanswered and Lisbon wasn’t insane enough to keep trying and expect a different result.

Facing the prospect of her restless mind lying awake in bed, she shrugged on her coat and set off for a long walk.

She slipped her phone in the pocket, kept her hand wrapped around it, just in case.

 

* * *

 

Jane never made love with a woman.

Young Patricia knew she liked boys and girls once she hit puberty and started looking. She lost track of the lips she kissed, the fingers she twined with, the figures she embraced. Yet that one line was a difficult one to cross. Her father had hammered into her that she was  _ never _ to spread her legs for some mark — everyone not in the Family was a mark — and he chased skirt across the states until Patricia could untether herself. Then came Andy, and she never wanted to have sex with anyone else.

Lorelei gasps and ruts into her palm and Jane wishes she were anywhere else. Poison coats Jane’s fingers and her stomach rolls as she sucks them into her mouth. It’s a game. It’s a charade. It’s killing her all the same.

Inevitably her mind strains to think of Lisbon. That hurts too. Teresa would be sweet, in all manner of ways. To see her toothy, breathless grin, flushed cheeks, her chest heaving for breath as Jane strove to give her the happiness she deserved… Only Jane has never deserved that pleasure and has sealed her fate with this private betrayal.

Jane buries her face in the pillow and masks her cries as ecstasy.

 

* * *

She’s in love with Jane.

It’s no longer a shock to think. There’s no more debating it or denying it. The knowledge, this secret, is just one more to carefully set aside.

It does nothing, Lisbon reflects as she passes the river side, transfixed on the glimmering streetlights on the choppy water. It means much but does nothing.

They are who they are. Lisbon is the one who cares and gives and thinks of herself last, while Jane is the one who is laser focused on her prize and will use anything and anyone to reach it. Jane is reckless and Lisbon is caution. Lisbon is the Law, Jane is Justice.

Jane may care, Lisbon doesn’t doubt that, not even after six months apart. She’s proven that she cares, the problem is it never changes her course of action. Wherever she is, Lisbon’s sure that when the thought of the CBI crosses her brilliant mind, Jane aches. And yet, she stays away.

They’ve always been different, but it’s never been starker than in this moment.

 

* * *

“He’s  _ in love _ with you,” Lorelei spits vitriol, now that the pleasantries have been dispensed with. “It’s so obvious. We’re not allowed to kill you. You’re his favorite. He wants you, Patricia.”

“As one of his ‘Mistresses’?” She can’t keep the bitter twist from the grandiose word. “Like you?”

“You’ll understand once you meet him again,” Lorelei lets slip, and Jane’s mind races. Again. Again. What could that mean? She flashes back to being duct taped to a chair, the menacing whisper in her ear,  _ Tyger, Tyger _ …

Lorelei is droning on in rapture. “The  _ power _ he possesses, the things he can give, the way he can make you  _ forget _ .” Kristina, convinced she was already dead…

“I don’t need to forget,” She snaps back, “And he underestimates  _ me _ .”

Lorelei laughs, a tinkling, grating sound. “Look at yourself, Patricia. You think you’re powerful? You think you’re safe? You think you’re happy?” Jane says nothing. She inhabits the role she’s crafted; the stains on her clothes, the hair on her legs, the yellow on her teeth. She lets her eyes cloud with doubt, sunken in, surrounded by the bruises of sleepless nights. “He would do anything for you if you only let him.” Lorelei relaxes into her victory. She reaches out one clawed hand, and Jane restrains her impulse to shy away, allows it to stroke down her arm. “You know where to find me, when you’re ready. He’ll be waiting for you, Patricia, with love.”

“Get out,” Jane croaks. Wisely or out of habit, Lorelei obeys. Jane shuts the door firmly behind her. Counts her heartbeats. Peers through the peephole, then risks disturbing the curtains to look out. Goes through her room, inspects everything she catalogued Lorelei touching. No signs of watchful eyes, though that’s no guarantee. Still, she grants herself the satisfaction of smiling.

_ Charlotte _ , she vows,  _ Andrew, I’m close, it’ll be over soon _ .

 


End file.
